Swimming w Dolphins - Picton or Bay of Islands?

Hello - we will be on the Ovation of the Seas Jan 9-23 sailing from Sydney to NZ. I am really determined to go swimming with dolphins in their natural habitat while we are there. I am debating between doing it in Bay of Islands or Picton, though.

The Bay of Islands tour seems a little better, as we won't need wetsuits. The problem is we already have a small private tour booked in the morning, so it would be 2 tours back to back, with no room to have any free time if we booked the dolphin cruise as well.

In Picton, we also have the option between a seal swim or dolphin swim. If we did the dolphin swim in BofI, then we can do the seal swim in Picton. I emailed the seal swim company though, and they thought we would have better luck finding dolphins to swim with rather than seals.

So I'm somewhat torn, I like the idea of swimming with dolphins in the BofI more - as it seems to have more of the Caribbean/beachy feel we are used to. But I don't want to waste all our our time on tours and not be able to do anything in BofI. Or.. where would we be more likely to actually be able to swim with dolphins?

Any input would be appreciated. Thanks!

We did the Bay of Island dolphins swim cruise and it was brilliant and highly recommended. For the first few hours we cruised around and saw many pods of dolphins right next to the boat, then went to one of the coves and did the swim with them. It was a great tour. This was in mid-Dec and the water was still very cold - most people wore wetsuits and still ended up turning blue! Picton would be that much colder again - I would recommend BofI.

There are several different boats that offer the tour. The one we did was Dolphin Eco Experience with Fullers GreatSights and was a much smaller boat than the others - I think there was only about 30 on our boat - whereas the others might take up to 100. Our boat was open sided and you were so close to the water that we were getting splashed by the dolphins jumping next to the boat.

http://www.dolphincruises.co.nz/bay-of-islands-cruises/swim-with-dolphins/

Cheers

Ando

Are stingers (killing jellyfish) in the water there?

Are stingers (killing jellyfish) in the water there?

No, no serious stingers in NZ. The worst you might get are bluebottles (Portuguese Man O'War jellyfish) which give a nasty sting but aren't usually fatal. The dolphin swim boat would probably be on the lookout for those. They aren't as common in NZ as they are around Australia.

No, no serious stingers in NZ. The worst you might get are bluebottles (Portuguese Man O'War jellyfish) which give a nasty sting but aren't usually fatal. The dolphin swim boat would probably be on the lookout for those. They aren't as common in NZ as they are around Australia.

Blue bottles usually only found in the west coast of New Zealand

Picton water always a bit on the chilly side Bay of Islands may be your best bet

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